Images from Battling Boy, courtesy First Second Books
Images from Battling Boy, courtesy First Second Books
Images from Battling Boy, courtesy First Second Books
The cover of Battling Boy, courtesy First Second Books
One of the most acclaimed artists working in comics today, Paul Pope recently released Battling Boy (see gallery), an all-ages superhero graphic novel about a young demigod who becomes the new savior of a town overrun with monsters after the death of its previous hero, scientist-adventurer Haggard West. Already being hailed an “instant classic,” Battling Boy is Pope at the top of his form, with raw, beautiful art and a lushly detailed world — worlds, really — rife with homages to the Fourth World created by legendary comics artist Jack Kirby. (Check out a 30-page preview here.)
Today, Pope and First Second Books told WIRED that a prequel to Battling Boy is on the way as well, titled The Rise of Aurora West. Set in the monster-beset town of Arcopolis, Aurora West delves into the backstory of Battling Boy’s first ally, Aurora West, daughter of the late science hero Haggard West.
While Pope covers both art and writing duties on Battling Boy, The Rise of Aurora West is co-written with J.T. Petty and drawn by David Rubin. “I really imagined [Haggard West] as a Doc Savage, Indiana Jones-type character, so when I was working on the script with J.T., I was able to get him to watch a lot of Universal serials from the ’30s, look at a lot of vintage pulp stuff,” said Pope. “There’s a lot of really cool pulp archaeology that went into the series. It’s just really fun; it has a totally different tone from Battling Boy.”
Pope is currently hard at work on the second volume of Battling Boy, which expands on the nascent partnership between science hero Aurora and demigod Battling Boy as both struggle to make their way as heroes in their parents’ formidable shadows. While those two characters sit at the core of the current story, Pope says he’d like to see the Battling Boy universe continue to expand and spin off in the future.
“We’re definitely planning some kind of a story platform, similar to maybe the way [Mike] Mignola uses Hellboy or [Frank] Miller, Sin City.” There’s certainly plenty to work with. Battling Boy is set in three realms, the gods’ Kirby-esque floating space fortress, the besieged human world, and the seedy underworld of the monsters, each ripe for exploration.
The Rise of Aurora West will be out in July 2014.
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